Pinstar's new Apocalypse challenge

[kutto]

Now I get "too cute."

[Sagana]

Ah I see. Yes that is cute. (and I did at least mention that would make it faster ;)

[rohina]

But how do you ensure it happens? You would have to unlock culinary early.

[daedreem]

You could also ... I don't THINK it's prohibbitted? but it MIGHT be.. I'll look later..
Bring a "too cute" cake back from college?

That's going by the assumption I've seen here that things the founder brings from college do not count as going against the rules.
Just pull it out as needed... that's a lot of twins.

[Kyna]

There's the no food in inv rule, and the rule about desserts that isn't here, but is on another forum.

The first time Alvaron mentioned this he^* referred to OFB in conjunction with Culinary/Military for your founder & spouse.  The second time he said "The challenge can be done faster with OFB and the correct unlock sequence"  So yeah, culinary would be a given.   And military to send them off to college to make room for more.  Once you can start sending your teens off to college, always have 7 sims in the house (your breeder and 6 growing) leaving one slot free for a sim to return & lift a restriction.  Move the founder's spouse out once he's lifted his restriction, then invite him over when you need him to father the next pair of brats.

The founder would be fertile for 6 pregnancies - 6x3 = 18 days.  Factor in a few days until you could send the first pair off to uni, to make room for the next pregnancy.  Doable without vamping or elixir for a female founder.  But you might want to have her fall in love with a vampire anyway, to hold in reserve, in case you need to vamp her to keep her fertile.  Doable, but I don't think I could do it, I'm not awesome enough.

^{* My apologies to Alvaron if I should have used she instead of he.}

EDIT to add: Darn ... now you guys have gone and done it.  I was going to play with the careers I've been downloading this weekend.  Now I want to play this challenge again instead.

[Alvaron]

EDIT to add: Darn ... now you guys have gone and done it.  I was going to play with the careers I've been downloading this weekend.  Now I want to play this challenge again instead.

Hee hee... just when you thought it was safe to go back into the simulation, the challenge pulls you back in! 

I'm still messing around with OFB, learning how the business lots work (and don't work  ). Earlier in this thread, somebody (Ivy, I think) mentioned that sims could gain skills on a business lot. Other than talent badges, it doesn't happen for my sims. Am I doing something wrong?

Barring a gender change while I was sleeping, Alvaron is a he.

[Kyna]

Going right back to the beginning of this challenge. 

I know my founder can't have an off-lot business pre-apocalypse, but there's no rule stopping her going downtown and working as a dj is there?  Now that's she maxed out creativity, if I put a dj booth, grill, espresso machine and bathroom with shower on a downtown lot she'll be able to stay there ringing up simoleons for as long as I can stand it.

[daedreem]

EDIT to add: Darn ... now you guys have gone and done it.  I was going to play with the careers I've been downloading this weekend.  Now I want to play this challenge again instead.

Hee hee... just when you thought it was safe to go back into the simulation, the challenge pulls you back in! 

I'm still messing around with OFB, learning how the business lots work (and don't work  ). Earlier in this thread, somebody (Ivy, I think) mentioned that sims could gain skills on a business lot. Other than talent badges, it doesn't happen for my sims. Am I doing something wrong?

Barring a gender change while I was sleeping, Alvaron is a he.

The person earlier in the thread had the community skilling hack, and had forgotten to remove it, if I remember correctly.

And no, gender changes don't happen while you sleep...  Isn't that when you drink a yellow potion? 

(PS...  I remember gender changes in some game...  Not the sims... but that SURE would be a fun addition as a backfire!)

[Sagana]

I don't think the no desserts would matter from something brought back from Uni (as everything else brought back is ok, even though it's restricted) but I guess you couldn't put it back IN inv after you took it out, so only one set of twins without lifting culinary. Still even one set would help.

I know my founder can't have an off-lot business pre-apocalypse, but there's no rule stopping her going downtown and working as a dj is there?  Now that's she maxed out creativity, if I put a dj booth, grill, espresso machine and bathroom with shower on a downtown lot she'll be able to stay there ringing up simoleons for as long as I can stand it.

I sure hope that's legal. As I've lifted military, even my not founder YAs are doing it. They can't have parties, dates and outings yet, but they can go to community lots now and I can't find anything that says they can't work as baristas and djs and whatnot. Unless I'm missing something and then, oh well, I'm planning on doing it again anyways.

[Sketch Elder]

I'm still messing around with OFB, learning how the business lots work (and don't work  ). Earlier in this thread, somebody (Ivy, I think) mentioned that sims could gain skills on a business lot. Other than talent badges, it doesn't happen for my sims. Am I doing something wrong?

Skilling on business lots is limited to Cooking and Body skill, and I believe that Body skill is limited to 6. These two skills are used in restaurants to control Chef and Server performance, so they can be learned the same way that badges can, including the lack of a progress bar. Other skills can only be trained at business lots if you're using a hack.

It seems to me that it's alright to bring a 'too cute' cake from college, but the 'no food in inventory' restriction means you'd have to place it on the lot immediately, and it would probably spoil long before you were ready to use it. You'd risk food poisoning with every pregnancy, but if you meditate through pregnancies and start with high Comfort and Energy, the food poisoning should be cured by the time of birth. Keep the serving platter on the roof or behind a locked door to prevent the Sims from throwing it out after it spoils.

If you already did a Uni business, then keep going with the challenge. Because it's not yet on the offical site, you don't need to call it a broken rule.

There's still no rule on the official site regarding businesses in college and Pinstar has updated the Apocalypse challenge at least twice since he made this comment. I'd say that pre-Apocalypse businesses are allowed.

[rohina]

It seems to me that it's alright to bring a 'too cute' cake from college, but the 'no food in inventory' restriction means you'd have to place it on the lot immediately, and it would probably spoil long before you were ready to use it. You'd risk food poisoning with every pregnancy, but if you meditate through pregnancies and start with high Comfort and Energy, the food poisoning should be cured by the time of birth. Keep the serving platter on the roof or behind a locked door to prevent the Sims from throwing it out after it spoils.

  This is so disgusting. "What treasure did you bring back from college?" Some runny green goo that used to be a cheesecake. mmmmmm.

[Jack Rudd]

This restriction in the Natural Science block:

"-Sims may not buy or use the flower-arranging bench, nor any of the flowers it produces."

Does this bar them from visiting Community Lots that already had snapdragons placed?

[Ivy]

I'm still messing around with OFB, learning how the business lots work (and don't work  ). Earlier in this thread, somebody (Ivy, I think) mentioned that sims could gain skills on a business lot. Other than talent badges, it doesn't happen for my sims. Am I doing something wrong?

Skilling on business lots is limited to Cooking and Body skill, and I believe that Body skill is limited to 6. These two skills are used in restaurants to control Chef and Server performance, so they can be learned the same way that badges can, including the lack of a progress bar. Other skills can only be trained at business lots if you're using a hack.

If you already did a Uni business, then keep going with the challenge. Because it's not yet on the offical site, you don't need to call it a broken rule.

There's still no rule on the official site regarding businesses in college and Pinstar has updated the Apocalypse challenge at least twice since he made this comment. I'd say that pre-Apocalypse businesses are allowed.

Combining the above...

And since my name was brought up yet...lol...I will add my additional 2 cents worth.

Speaking of your founder on a business lot, and aside from comm-skilling/traditional skilling items, and aside from the above mentioned ways of earning skillpoints, you can also gain skillpoints two more ways that I can think of on a business lot: outings and the sim-vac.  Yes, the sim-vac...one of the most overlooked aspiration rewards for this challenge IMHO.

Not only can you suck skillpoints out of those simmies you aren't planning on using or other unsuspecting simmies along the way, you can also suck their aspiration points for a quick boost to yours.  There's no restrictions on aspiration rewards for your founder at all, and whether or not you use the sim-vac on a business lot is a moot point...it can be done home or business lot. 

When you think about it, that's really a powerful item to consider unlocking as your one aspiration item to unlock when you unlock Science.  Then you don't have to worry about which sim is in which career for which reward item.  Just go around sucking the skillpoints out of other simmies.  And if by some weird twist of fate you run out of sims to suck points from from your "other" pool, why not start sucking from those that have already reached the top of their careers?  Really those folks should be just as much fair game as anyone else.  And it's not that hard to repair the relationship hits from the sim-vac anyway.

Hrm, sucking seems to be quite a theme for this challenge...vampires, sim-vac...hehehe.

Just another angle to consider on this challenge...suck your way to the top!


Ivy

[rohina]

I've just started this challenge, and skill points by dating and vac are high on my list of strategeries. My founder is a romance sim, so I am also working on getting her permaplat.

[Sagana]

I considered the simvac but didn't bother as I thought I might want the sims with good skills for spouses later and it was just too easy to max all skills for the founder. She didn't have anything to do at Uni but skill.

She went downtown, dated, earned, money, dated some more (for the extra energy hit) or caffeinated, called all her profs and friends, etc. The only things she did at home were the occasional class (plenty of influence so the dormies did her assignments and term papers except the last few min. for the aspiration pts.) and skilling. Well and jumping in the energizer. She left the last cooking skill because she rolled up a want to fill it and that and the corresponding "gain a cooking skill pt." were a nice easy platinum when she got home.

The vac would have been nice for the heirs tho. Call up all those worthless losers in the romance game and vacuum them all up. Can kids use it?

[rohina]

I was planning on vaccing the dormies, since there is no point AT ALL in marrying them.

[Sagana]

True enough, and they're annoying and ugly besides. Sounds fun even. I turned most of mine into zombies when the apocalypse hit.

[rohina]

I made a zombie family in the main hood. They run a florist shop, and they might just happen to hire a promising undergrad as a part-time flower-arranger. 

[Treehugger]

I made a zombie family in the main hood. They run a florist shop, and they might just happen to hire a promising undergrad as a part-time flower-arranger. 

Err, I tried that on my second run through the challenge.  Doesn't work, business owners can't hire young adults.

However,playable business owners can very useful in other respects.  I mean why fill up your founders valuable inventory slots with fripperies like snapdragons, munchiebots and cheesecakes of doom?

When you can sell said items to the potential spouses of the founder and fill their inventories.

At least the cheesecake will be fresher...

[Kyna]

Err, I tried that on my second run through the challenge.  Doesn't work, business owners can't hire young adults.

My business owners get dormies come up on the hire menu all the time.  The last dormie I hired in one of my businesses was also in the process of being pledged to my Greek House to be the placeholder until the next generation was ready to go to uni.  So he became playable, and kept his job as an employee while still being a YA.  I also had Mary-Sue Pleasant hire Angela to work for her while Angela was at uni - that was to satisfy Mary-Sue's want to hire Angela.

[J. M. Pescado]

The ability to hire YAs is a product of the "no lame hires" hack, and perhaps a few others from less awesome people. It's not standard behavior, not that this makes much of a difference, as who you hire is largely irrelevant.

[daedreem]

The ability to hire YAs is a product of the "no lame hires" hack, and perhaps a few others from less awesome people. It's not standard behavior, not that this makes much of a difference, as who you hire is largely irrelevant.

That sounds cool... I may have to look up said hack.

When it's not broken, I tend to prefer keeping standard game behavior, because otherwise it's too tempting to make things too easy... But I despise the fact that young adults, the age group most likely to have lousy part-time jobs, can't be hired.
 I do also dislike the fact that you can't actually hire ANYONE part time... everyone you employ is actually full-time, as you see when you play a family with one member emplyed by a business. - any hack to address this? yeah.. I know.. doubtful. But I'd love to employ, say, teens, and then find they work 3-6 instead of 9-5.

[J. M. Pescado]

OFBp2, teens work 1500-2000 instead of 0900-1700.

[Kyna]

Heh, I thought that because Mary-Sue rolled up the want to hire her YA daughter that it must be possible in an unhacked game. 

Silly me.  I should know by now that just because a sim rolls up a certain want doesn't mean the want can actually be satisfied.

[J. M. Pescado]

The want can appear because the hack makes it possible to do so, so it becomes wantable.